America the Beautiful -- Katherine Lee Bates

She had used two modes of travel and absorbed the scenery along the way. Katherine Lee Bates tells a story about “America the Beautiful” that urges one to climb a mountain to find a view, and also to ponder what might pass before one’s eyes on a train ride. She’d already travelled abroad to study by the time she was 34 years old, so maybe that helped her appreciate even more the homeland of which she wrote during the last decade of the 19^th Century. But, she didn’t stop with the vivid imagery of the scenery she’d beheld. Toward whom did she and the nation she called home owe their allegiance? This patriot would call upon the Provider and the Creator for Divine intervention, and would remind her fellow citizens of His presence and blessings on them.

  

Katherine Bates and some other college professors went to the top of Pike’s Peak in Colorado’s

Rocky Mountains in 1893, apparently without the assistance of a railway (shown here in 1901) that others might have taken later on that ascent. It was an exhausting adventure, but that didn’t prevent her from capturing the vision she beheld at the top. Skies and mountains towered over the plains (v.1), so how could she not pause to appreciate what she was seeing for the first time from that spot? She also thought about the gleaming ‘white city’ of Chicago and the World’s Fair that she had visited on the way to Colorado (an ‘alabaster’ city, v.4). Katherine was gifted with the English language, which served her well as a professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, but the sights she apprehended on her trip west that year in 1893 spawned something fresh, four verses of poetry that she produced for publication first in 1895. She entitled it ‘Pike’s Peak’ initially and then ‘America’ for broader distribution, including in 1904 and 1911 when she re-crafted some of the words; this trip west was not something she quickly forgot, apparently. She had studied abroad just a couple of years earlier (1890-1) at Oxford, England, so travel to see other parts of the world far from her East Coast hometown was becoming part of her personality. Another part of her character was the spirit of her father, who was a Congregational minister who died when she was just a few weeks old; her mother and aunt who raised Katherine were graduates of Mount Holyoke Seminary, so Katherine had more than a notion about her Creator when she reflected on the blessings of her home country as she stood atop Pikes Peak.

She called out to her own countrymen, and upon God, as she penned four stanzas that summer of 1893. ‘Remember who has blessed us with these stunning vistas’ (v.1), she reminded those who would read her words on that Fourth of July, 1893. ‘Brotherhood’, she coaxed them, was the way to ‘pay forward’ what each of them as Americans possessed; this would not have been a casual suggestion for her or any other citizens still living in the shadow of the Civil War. The nation’s history that included the first pilgrims (v.2) and other ‘heroes’ (v.3) up until her own time occupied Katherine’s thoughts. Hers was not a spotless, invulnerable country, so she asked everyone to call out to the Creator to ‘mend…flaw(s)’ (vv.2,4) ‘refine’ them as a people (v.3), and exercise ‘self-control’ in submitting to the law (v.4). America! The Beautiful…it’s not just a picture-postcard collection. Katherine Bates saw and hoped for much more than that. Think about what she said today, OK?      

   

See more information on the song story in these sources: The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006; Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1990; 101 More Hymn Stories, by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1985; Then Sings My Soul – 150 of the World’s Greatest Hymn Stories, Robert J. Morgan, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003; and A Treasury of Hymn Stories – Brief Biographies of 120 Hymnwriters with Their Best Hymns, by Amos R. Wells, Baker Book House Company, 1945.

Also see this link, showing all four original verses: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/o/b/f/obfsskis.htm

Also see this site for song information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_the_Beautiful